3 Industry 4.0 leaders: William Ruh, Simon Bradley, Marijn Ten Wolde

Each month we will be profiling three Industry 4.0 leaders who are driving forward the IIoT in their respective businesses and leading the charge towards digital transformation.

Simon Bradley – image courtesy of Manufacturing Leaders’ Conference

Simon Bradley: Global Head of Innovation and Cyber Security for Airbus

As vice president of product and cyber security program directorate for Airbus, Simon Bradley is an internationally recognised technology leader, and a driver of innovation.

His work for the Airbus Group includes System and Software Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Virtual Reality and Simulation, Information Technology and HPC, as well as Cyber and Homeland Security.

In a 2016 interview, Simon explained that Airbus began moving toward using Internet of Things (IoT) with their implementation of RFID for tracking parts.

“Now we’re moving towards IoT devices to track tools in the factory so that engineers know where their key tools are, the tools can tell them if the torque is correct for implementation and determine if products need maintenance,” he said.

William Ruh is responsible for creating digital software solutions and services at GE. In his role as CDO, Bill also created GE’s Digital Thread – “a next generation system for streamlining design, manufacturing and support processes”, and is responsible for global IT.

Bill has played an integral role in bringing together academia, industry, and government leaders to establish the Industrial Internet Consortium. The Industrial Internet Consortium aims to set the “standards, best practices and processes for the Industrial Internet”.

In an interview with Computer Weekly in July of this year, Bill commented on the reason behind GE Digital’s creation:

“We built GE Digital to create digital solutions for the industrial world and set out to make GE the proving ground for our new ways of working and our vision of the future,” he said.

He also spoke on how new technologies can be incorporated to assist manufacturers in troubleshooting problems:

“Manufacturers can put sensors in pallets and in warehouses, and even on the packages themselves, to help them understand the root cause of the issue. Was it heat? Was it bacteria? How many pallets were affected?” he said.

Marijn Ten Wolde – image courtesy of Linkedin

Marijn Ten Wolde: Global Industry 4.0 Lead for Philips

With experience in project management, cost optimisation for manufacturing, lean manufacturing and Industry 4.0, Wolde is a powerhouse of manufacturing knowledge, particularly in the digital manufacturing field.

Speaking to INFORMabout the future of connectivity in Industry 4.0, Marijn has said:

“Industry 4.0 offers many benefits for the entire value chain. This is where connectivity will play a very important role. In the future, a customer will order a product then everything will run autonomously – people, machines and products and materials will all ‘know’ where to go […] In the future we will be producing on-demand rather than producing ‘stock’.”